Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. At the same time this chronic disease is largely preventable. Medical science knows how to save most of these lives by removing the major risk factors of smoking, diabetes, and hypertension. And many people are told just what they need to do to reduce these risk factors—stop smoking, reduce sugar intake, eat healthier, reduce alcohol intake, increase cardiovascular exercise, lose weight, and, if needed, take blood-pressure medication. But many people do not follow this good advice. Because of this, millions of people needlessly die from cardiovascular disease.
People don't follow this good medical advice because they think they are different, they do not want to change their behaviors that are causing the disease, or they do not know what to change in their particular case. When a physician tells them that they are at risk from heart disease because they are overweight, for example, many people know that this judgment is not necessarily specific to them—it is based on averages and demographics. So being a particular weight may not negatively affect a particular patient's heart. Further, a lack of feedback that their behavior is harming their heart results in a lack of incentive for them to change their behavior.
This lack of incentive to follow good advice can be addressed by monitoring the state of the patient's cardiovascular system over time to show trends in heart health. Hard data often motivates patients to modify their behavior, such as data indicating that their heart shows measurable signs of heart disease. Unfortunately, current methods for measuring heart health can be inconvenient, stressful, and expensive. Simple home monitor products exist for measuring heart rate and blood pressure, but long-term user compliance is a problem due to inconvenience. More advanced cardiovascular monitoring, such as heart rate variability, arterial stiffness, cardiac output, and atrial fibrillation, involve expensive and time-consuming trips to a medical facility for a skilled assessment. Because of this, only patients that demonstrate late stage symptoms of heart disease are likely to receive these tests, which is generally too late to make simple lifestyle changes that would avoid a chronic disease.
Another reason that people don't follow this good advice, or don't follow it for long enough to prevent heart disease, is because they do not see the benefit. When people take the advice of changing their diet and habits—which most people do not want to do—they often don't see the improvement before they lose the motivation to continue monitoring their cardiovascular status. Because of this, many people go back to their old habits only to later die of heart disease.